I always cringe when I hear the leadership talking about how they are raising the standards, employees aren’t properly trained and how there is internal competition. Read some of these quotes:

“People are going to make mistakes. In a crime lab, you can’t have mistakes,” he said. “It points to an effort for continuing training.”

“Morale at the BCI officers is super-low; I mean, there is a definite morale problem,”

“I am in the lab, and I don’t think people are going to be reluctant to bring forward an issue,” Stickrath said. “It’s always hard to quantify employee morale, but our folks are high-producing, and I set high standards for them.”

Dr. Deming identified these problems 50 years ago- the problem is with the Leadership not the People! They created a culture of fear, competition and blaming the people for mistakes instead of looking at the system. The system is producing exactly what it is designed to do!

They need to look at process control, mistake proofing, standard operating procedures and understanding variation before blaming the people for mistakes that the system allows to happen- no wander no one speaks up- they are in fear of their jobs!